As soon as I learned about Madmenyourself, I had to madmenmyself:
And then I had to madmenJeff:
Not bad, eh?
Here are our closeups:
Now for a bit of Tuesday afternoon philosophical thought (that and I just finished my lunch so I’ve got a few minutes to kill before I get back to work)
When I was creating these, I chose the looks to most resemble ourselves (ok, ok, I chose the skinny body for myself when the medium body was prooooobbbbably more accurate). On the last step of the process, you choose a background.
Jeff’s background was a no-brainer (who wouldn’t love to work at Sterling Cooper?) but I wavered a bit on mine – 1960’s setting and sexism aside, I guess I “should” go in the secretary’s pool scene. Since that’s what my real job is, or something. But, obviously, I ended up choosing Betty Draper’s kitchen.
What it really boils down to is, I (the real me, not the caricature me) would be much more comfortable in the kitchen than in the workforce. This mental digression was prompted by an excellent blog post by my friend Stefanie. Rather than ramble and wax philosophical about the meaning of life &etc &etc (though, from my strongly skeptical background I’m highly motivated to chalk everything up to biology + chance), I’ll just say this:
To me, feminism is the freedom to do whatever you want with your life.
Am I an anti-feminist because my goal in life is to be a stay-at-home mom? Nowhere am I more comfortable than I am wearing an apron, baking bread in the kitchen. I appreciate that I *could* choose other routes in life, I’m very glad to have the options, but that’s not what I want. But I think that lot of people – people who don’t really understand feminism – would think that I was being ‘repressed’ somehow, by not having a career.
But at the same time, just because my dream is to have an old house and lots of kids and make my own bread, that doesn’t mean that I think *your* dream should be the same.
I detest having roles or definitions thrown onto me. Right now, I’m working in an office making copies and spreadsheets. In a few years (hopefully) I’ll be staying home and raising kids. Does that mean I’m “giving things up” for the sake of this hypothetical family? Sure, in many ways, but not in every way. But that doesn’t mean that my “role” will be Suzy Homemaker – I don’t want a minivan and a McMansion in the suburbs; I’m too much of a hippie for that. (But at the same time, being a hippie doesn’t mean I want to give up on shaving my legs or the occasional trip to Taco Bell). I *can’t* be defined by just one role (or two). No one can. So don’t even try.
So when I made my silly little Internet picture, I put myself someplace that the real me (the Betty Draper side of me, I suppose) would be happy. But I reserve the right to leave the kitchen and go on a hike whenever I want. To me, that’s what feminism is.
